You Are Not So Smart

Terry Crews, actor, athlete, artist, President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho, star of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, host of America’s Got Talent - that Terry Crews joins us to discuss his new book, Tough. In the book, Terry shares the raw story of his quest to find the true meaning of toughness and in so doing fundamentally change his concept of himself by uprooting a deeply ingrained toxic masculinity and finally confronting his insecurities, painful memories, and limiting beliefs.Terry Crews WebsiteTerry Crews TwitterToughAlfie Kohn’s Punished by RewardsKitted ShopThe Story of KittedHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterNewsletterPatreon

In this episode, we sit down with therapist Britt Frank to discuss the intention action gap, the psychological term for the chasm between what you very much intend to do and what you tend to do instead. It turns out, there's a well-researched psychological framework that includes a term for when you have a stated, known goal – a change you'd like to make in your life – something you wake up intending to finally do or get started doing, but then don't do while knowing full well you are actively not doing what you ought and wish you had done by now. After we discuss this phenomenon and how to deal with it, we get into procrastination and how to escape all manner of dead-end behavioral loops. The Getting Unstuck WorkbookThe Science of StuckKitted ShopThe Story of KittedHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletterPatreon

Marina Nitze is a professional fixer of broken systems – a hacker, not of computers and technology, but of the social phenomena that tend to emerge when people get together and form organizations, institutions, services, businesses, and governments. In short, she hacks bureaucracies and wants to teach you how to do the same.- Hack Your Bureaucracy- Marina Nitze- How Minds Change- David McRaney’s Twitter- YANSS Twitter- Show Notes- Newsletter - Patreon

In this episode we sit down with Brian Klaas, author of Fluke,  to get into the existential lessons and grander meaning for a life well-lived once one finally accepts the power and influence of randomness, chaos, and chance. In addition, we learn not to fall prey to proportionality bias - the tendency for human brains to assume big, historical, or massively impactful events must have had big causes and/or complex machinations underlying their grand outcomes. It’s one of the cognitive biases that most contributes to conspiratorial thinking and grand conspiracy theories, one that leads to an assumption that there must be something more going on when big, often unlikely, events make the evening news. Yet, as Brian explains, events big and small are often the result of random inputs in complex systems interacting in ways that are difficult to predict.Previous EpisodesBrian KlaasFlukeHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterNewsletterPatreon

In this episode, we  are exploring the complexity of the concept of "genius" with two experts on the topic. First you’ll hear from David Krakauer, the president of The Santa Fe Institute, a research institution in New Mexico dedicated to the study of complexity science, and then you'll hear from professor Dean Keith Simonton, one of the world’s leading researchers into the psychological mechanisms and influences that generate the phenomenon we so often refer to as "genius." Previous EpisodesThe Santa Fe InstituteDean K SimontonHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterNewsletter

In this episode we sit down with professor of Neil Theise, the author of Notes on Complexity,  to get an introduction to complexity theory, the science of how complex systems behave – from cells to human beings, ecosystems, the known universe, and beyond – and we explore if Ian Malcolm was right when he told us in Jurassic Park that "Life, um, finds a way."Previous EpisodesNeil Theise's WebsiteNotes on ComplexityConway's Game of LifeThe Santa Fe InstituteTechnosphereHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterNewsletter

Is a hotdog a sandwich?Well, that depends on your definition of a sandwich (and a hotdog), and according to the most recent research in cognitive science, the odds that your concept of a sandwich is the same as another person's concept are shockingly low.In this episode we explore how understanding why that question became a world-spanning argument in the mid 2010s helps us understand some of the world-spanning arguments vexing us today. Our guest is psychologist Celeste Kidd who studies how we acquire and conceptualize information, form beliefs around those concepts, and, in general, make sense of the torrent of information blasting our brains each and every second. Her most recent paper examines how conceptual misalignment can lead to semantic disagreements, which can lead us to talk past each other (and get into arguments about things like whether hotdogs are sandwiches).Previous Episodes Why can’t we settle the “is a hot dog a sandwich?” debate?How Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterNewslette

In this episode we sit down with psychologist Dacher Keltner, one of the world’s leading experts on the science of emotion, the man Pixar hired to help them write Inside Out. In his new book – Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life – he outlines his years of work in this field, the health benefits of awe, the evolutionary origins and likely functions, and how to better pursue more awe and wonder in your own life.Dacher Kelter: https://psychology.berkeley.edu/people/dacher-keltnerGreater Good: https://twitter.com/GreaterGoodSCHow Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehomeShow Notes: www.youarenotsosmart.comNewsletter: https://davidmcraney.substack.comDavid McRaney’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmcraneyYANSS Twitter: https://twitter.com/notsmartblog

In this episode we welcome psychologist Mary C. Murphy, author of Cultures of Growth, who tells us how to create institutions, businesses, and other groups of humans that can better support collaboration, innovation, performance, and wellbeing. We also learn how, even if you know all about the growth mindset, the latest research suggests you not may not be creating a culture of growth despite what feels like your best efforts to do so. Mary Murphy’s WebsiteCultures of GrowthCarol Dweck at GooglePaper: A Culture of GeniusHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletterPatreon

In 1974, two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, as the New Yorker once put it, "changed the way we think about the way we think." The prevailing wisdom, before their landmark research went viral (in the way things went viral in the 1970s), was that human beings were, for the most part, rational optimizers always making the kinds of judgments and decisions that best maximized the potential of the outcomes under their control. This was especially true in economics at the time. The story of how they generated a paradigm shift so powerful that it reached far outside economics and psychology to change they way all of us see ourselves is a fascinating tale, one that required the invention of something this episode is all about: The Psychology of Single Questions.They Thought We Were RidiculousOpinion ScienceBehavioral GroovesHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletterPatreon

Jeremy Utley, Kian Gohar, and Henrik Werdelin sit down to discuss the surprising results of a new study into what happens when groups of people work together to brainstorm solutions to problems with the help of ChatGPT. Based on their research, Utley and Gohar created a new paradigm for getting the most out of AI-assisted ideation which they call FIXIT.FIXITBeyond the PromptD-SchoolJeremy Utley's WebsiteKian Gohar's WebsiteHenrik Werdelin's WebsiteHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletterPatreon

Our guest in this episode is Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer for the New Yorker Magazine who is also the New York Times Bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better. His new book is Supercommunicators, a practical and approachable guide to what makes great conversations work. In the episode we discuss the science behind what it takes to form a connection with another human being through dialogue, how to generate or nurture a bond, and how to form, repair, and maintain a conversational pipeline through listening and communicating that guarantees reciprocation and understanding.Charles DuHigg's WebsiteCharles DuHigg's TwitterSupercommunicatorsThe Artemis MissionThe Goddard Spaceflight CenterHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletter

There are several ways to define pluralistic ignorance, and that’s because it’s kind of a brain twister when you try to put it into words. On certain issues, most people people believe that most people believe what, in truth, few people believe. Or put another way, it is the erroneous belief that the majority is acting in a way that matches its internal philosophies, and that you are one of a small number of people who feel differently, when in reality the majority agrees with you on the inside but is afraid to admit it outright or imply such through its behavior. Everyone in a group, at the same time, gets stuck following a norm that no one wants to follow, because everyone is carrying a shared, false belief about everyone else’s unshared true beliefs.Deborah Prentice’s WebsiteRobb Willer’s WebsiteRobb Willer’s TwitterHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletter

On this episode we learn about the history of the exclamation point, the question mark, and the semicolon (among many other aspects of language) with Florence Hazrat, a scholar of punctuation, who, to my great surprise, informed me that while a lot of language is the result of a slow evolution, a gradual ever-changing process, punctuation in the English language is often an exception to this – for instance, a single person invented the semicolon; they woke up and the semicolon didn’t exist, and then went to bed that night, and it did!Florence Hazrat's WebsiteAn Admirable PointHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletter

Temple Grandin didn’t develop speech until much later than most children, and she might have led a much different life if it hadn’t been for people who worked very hard to open up a space for her to thrive. In this episode we discuss all that as well as her latest book, Visual Thinking, about three distinct ways that human brains create human minds to make sense of the world outside of their skulls.Temple GrandinVisual ThinkingTemple Grandin’s TwitterHow Minds Change: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschangehomeDavid McRaney’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmcraneyYANSS Twitter: https://twitter.com/notsmartblogShow Notes: www.youarenotsosmart.comNewsletter: https://davidmcraney.substack.com

In this episode David McRaney is interviewed by Andrea Chalupa about the psychological research covered in How Minds Change that could help if you expect to spend time with a family member this holiday who can't wait to pull you into an argument about politics, a wedge issue, or something else buzzing in the zeitgeist over which they'd love to start a fight. But, also, this is good stuff to know before ANY contentious conversation you might have in the future with someone who is quick to aggression and ready to get angry over how your opinion isn't their opinion. • Gaslit Nation• Transcript• Andrea Chalupa’s Twitter• Sarah Kendzior’s Twitter• The Critical Thinking Alliance• The Conspiracy Test• Newsletter• How Minds Change• David McRaney’s Twitter• YANSS Twitter

How likely is the fungal infection in The Last of Us? The one that takes over human brains and brings humanity to the brink of extinction, could something like that really happen?In this episode we sit down with Emily Monosson, an expert on deadly fungal infections, and discuss the handful of fungi (we know of) that are today, right now, causing catastrophic declines in wildlife, eradicating trees, destroying crops, and increasingly impacting humans.Monsoon explains that many in the field worry that fungi are an underestimated threat and that our actions are causing an increase in invasive and deadly fungal epidemics. We explore what is at stake, why this is happening now, and what we can do to prevent future outbreaks.• Emily Monosson's Website• Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic• 2013 Trailer for The Last of Us• Newsletter• How Minds Change• David McRaney’s Twitter• YANSS Twitter• Show Notes

In this episode we sit down with Greg Satell, a communication expert whose book, Cascades, details how rapid, widespread change can sweep across groups of people big and small, and how understanding the psychological mechanisms at play in such moments can help anyone looking to create change in a family, institution, or even nation, prepare for the inevitable resistance they will face.• Special Offer From Greg Satell• Greg Satell's Website• Greg Satell's Blog• Greg Satell's Twitter• Newsletter• How Minds Change• David McRaney’s Twitter• YANSS Twitter• Show Notes

In this episode Jesse Richardson tells us all about ConspiracyTest.org, a new project designed to be a weird, fun, and cleverly educational way to explore just how skeptical you are (and could be) about a variety of conspiracy theories. The whole thing is designed to be very sharable and very viral, and it's launching right before Thanksgiving 2023 so that you can share it with your conspiracy-theory-entertaining friends and family over the holidays, in person or over social media (but you should definitely try it out on yourself first).• Newsletter• School of Thought• The Conspiracy Test• Metaconspiracy• How Minds Change• David McRaney’s Twitter• YANSS Twitter• Jesse Richardson's Website• Jesse Richardson's Twitter• Your Bias Is• Your Fallacy Is• Free Learning List• The Rules of Civil Conversation• Show Notes(thanks for listening, share with abandon)

I recently sat down for a live event and Q&A with the great Annie Duke to discuss her new book, Quit: The power of knowing when to walk away. This episode is the audio from that event. Quit is all about how to develop a very particular skill: how to train your brain to make it easier to know which goals and plans are worth sticking to and which are not. In Quit, Duke teaches you how to get good at quitting. Drawing on stories from elite athletes like Mount Everest climbers, founders of leading companies like Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, and top entertainers like Dave Chappelle, Duke explains why quitting is integral to success, as well as strategies for determining when to hold em, and when to fold em, that will save you time, energy, and money.• Connections• Newsletter• Annie Duke's Twitter• Annie Duke’s Website• School of Thought• The Conspiracy Test• The Alliance for Decision Education• The Decision Education Podcast• Show Notes